The Leaders - Live Paris 2007

the leaders
jvc jazz festival
new morning paris, france18.10.2007

Personnel:

chico freeman – ts, ss
bobby watson – as
eddie henderson – tr, flh
fred harris – p
buster williams – b
michael baker – dr

01. unknown title 22:44
02. unknown title 32:29
03. intro chico freeman 04:46
04. the ascended one 16:25

The muti-instrumentalist reedsman, Chico Freeman formed the first version of the band he called The Leaders in the 1980s. The other horn players were Lester Bowie and Arthur Blythe. They made several recordings, one of which, "Slipping and Sliding" is still available for download on fredito's excellent blog site http://huppeshyalites.blogspot.com/ (you'll have to search for it).

The Leaders have recently been reformed with the lineup on this concert, recorded in Paris (one of a grand tour of Europe in October and November). I'm not familiar with Bobby Watson, I gather he started his career with Art Blakey and later formed a band called Horizon (which I know nothing about). Eddie Henderson played with Herbie Hancock's band for many years, and has since played with just about everybody around. Of the rhythm section, I guess the best known is Buster Williams, having played with Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Elvin Jones and a whole bunch of other greats, as well as leading his own bands.

The music on this recording is really red hot. Stylistically, I guess you'd call it hard bob (or post bebop). I don't really know what these labels mean.

The recording is taken from a satellite broadcast, courtesy of seeder "unclewolfi".
I have posted links for both flac and mp3 VBR 0. Links in comments.